A committee led by Sen. Rand Paul voted to hold former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci in contempt following a contentious hearing where he pleaded the Fifth over 100 times.

Paul, who is chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he brought the resolution forward to hold Fauci accountable.

“Seeking the truth is not a witch hunt,” Paul said. “Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is what stands between the American people and a repeat of the mistakes and the very real consequences of the past.”

The resolution passed on an 8-5 vote along party Thursday morning. Republicans voted in favor, while Democrats opposed the measure.

Fauci was one of the country’s most visible public health official during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was a member of the coronavirus task force during President Donald Trump’s first administration and a chief medical adviser on COVID-19 for President Joe Biden.

In 2025, Biden pardoned Fauci for any actions he may have taken from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 20, 2025.

Paul for years has accused Fauci of misleading the public about the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

During the July 29 meeting, Fauci declined to answer any questions from lawmakers, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.

“Given Sen. Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said in a brief opening statement last week.

Paul released over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diaries, and he alleged that Fauci didn’t give enough credit to theories that the virus may have been created in a laboratory in China.

Paul added Fauci’s pardon does not cover any actions since Jan. 20, 2025, including statements to Congress that may have been inaccurate.

“A pardon may protect a person from criminal prosecution. It doesn’t rewrite history,” Paul said July 29, according to States Newsroom. “It does not erase documents. It does not convert a misleading statement into a truthful one.”

Paul grew frustrated with Fauci declining to answer questions and said the committee would vote to hold Fauci in contempt for not answering questions under subpoena.

Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, voted against the resolution and said Thursday it puts the credibility and powers of Congress at risk.

“Following a one-sided investigation and a rushed process that has repeatedly excluded the minority and other members of this committee, the chairman is now asking the committee to take a vote that could harm our ability to conduct future investigations and disregards constitutional protections long recognized by the Senate,” Peters said.

According to reporting from CNN, Paul has vowed to send the committee’s recommendation to the Justice Department and bypass a full Senate vote. That could set up a legal and political test for the Trump administration.

Vice President JD Vance, who is president of the Senate, would need to sign off on the committee’s circumvention.

“There is not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t law so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” Paul told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a referral, it’s a recommendation.”

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